Daily National Intelligencer

THE PRAIRIES OF THE WEST.

FROM SILLIMAN'S JOURNAL.

To the traveller, who for several days traverses the prairies and barrens, their appearance is quite uninviting, and even disagreeable. He may travel from morning until night, and make good speed, but on looking around him, he fancies himself at the very spot whence he started. No pleasant variety of hill and dale, no rapidly running brook delights the eye, and no sound of woodland music strikes the ear; but, in their stead, a dull uniformity of prospect "spread out immense." Excepting here and there a tree, or a slight elevation of ground, it is otherwise a dead level, covered with tall weeds and coarse grass. The sluggish rivulets, of a reddish colour, scarcely move perceptibly, and their appearance is as uninviting to the eye, as their taste is disgusting to the palate. Such are the prairies and barrens of the west; but, in order to make ample amends for any deficiency, nature has made them exuberantly fertile. The farmer who settles upon them, by raising cattle, becomes rich with little labor. He ditches those which are too moist for grain; he ploughs and fences them, and raises from seventy to one hundred bushels of maize, or Indian corn, to the acre, without ever hoeing it. The United States owns thousands and thousands of acres of such land in the western States and Territories, which, for prompt payment, may be purchased for one dollar and sixty-two and a half cents an acre. One objection to these lands is, the want of timber for fuel and other purposes; and another is, that they are unhealthy: but in many places there is an abundance of peat in the wet prairies, and cultivation will every year render them more and more healthy. Some of them have been cultivated for fifteen or twenty years past, with grain, and are as fertile as they ever were. As M. Volney says, "They are the Flanders of America."